The Fragile Heart
by Avonlea Inspirations
Summary: To Susan, those four words were not mere words, but a promise. A promise of a lifetime of devotion. Two shot.
1. A Promise

**AN: **Another Susan story. :) There's just something so fascinating about the "Last Battle" Susan.

**Disclaimer:** Nope, don't own it.

* * *

"Will you marry me?"

The words I'd always wanted to hear. When I was a little girl, I'd lie in bed with my feet hanging over the edge and my eyes raised to the ceiling, building dream castles and wondering (as children do) what my future would hold. I'd be married (of course), but the face of my betrothed was blank. A blank canvas waiting to be filled. The number of children I would have was a blur, ten being the minimum; and the house was but a storing place for all my dreams. All my ambitions.

* * *

"Will you marry me?"

Four simple words; they signified the beginning of my hopes. Countless times as a child I would sit on an empty park bench, watching the neighbourhood boys playing their games. I would picture a future with each and come back to reality dissatisfied. I was too young, the wedding dress didn't fit, and the bridegroom was picking his nose. No, I decided. Now was not the time. Give a year, take a year, and perhaps I would be ready to wed. I put aside my wedding plans and stole the ball from Charlie Penning.

After all, how long is a childhood?

* * *

"Will you marry me?"

The four simple words redisplayed themselves in my consciousness when I reached fifteen. A lot had happened in those years. I had discovered a magical land known as Narnia. I had fallen in and out of love. I had become a woman. The four words were no longer mere words, but a promise. A promise of a lifetime of devotion, and I decided that I was ready to give and receive that devotion.

But how do you go about being fifteen when you feel so much older?

* * *

"Will you marry me?"

It was at the age of sixteen that I made my decision. I must forget. I must put it out of mind. Out of my heart. If I forgot, then I should feel my age. I should fall in love, once more. It was quite shocking how easily I cast those memories from my heart.

"Susan," I remember Edmund saying, "do you remember the spring festival in Narnia?"

"Narnia?" I replied, genuinely puzzled. "Oh! You mean the quaint little game we played as children?"

The room grew quiet. Peter and Lucy looked up from their chess game; their faces displayed mirrored shock.

How comical I thought it then.

"I'm sixteen; I shall act sixteen. Such games are for children." That was all I would ever say on the subject; and gradually I became used to Peter and Lucy's pained expressions, and Edmund's sad, yet knowing look.

* * *

"Will you marry me?"

I thought about those four words when Peter went off to university, when Edmund graduated with honours, and when Lucy went off to school without me for the first time. They all seemed so content. The future was simply there, for them, and it did not bother them how long it took in coming.

They wished to remain in never-ending childhood. I envied their quiet faith and mysterious knowledge that everything would turn out fine, no matter the trial.

I wished to be a never-ending child, too.

* * *

"Will you marry me?"

The future was too long in coming. I was unsettled and half-crazed with pent up thoughts and emotions. My eighteen birthday came and went, and I decided that this was the age I wished to remain. Not quite a child, and yet not an adult, either. Silly as a spoilt child, with adult privileges. I drank; I smoked; I looked for love, yet never found it. No one was willing to offer the promise.

A betwixt and between, I was, and I deluded myself into believing that this -- this was living.

Some life.

* * *

"Will you marry me?"

I thought of the words as I went about my everyday life. I lived in an apartment. I owned a cat who screamed in mortal agony if I applied lipstick in his presence. (He was a kindred spirit to Peter, I am sure). I had many admirers, but they were shallow and dull.

At night I'd lie in my bed with my legs hooked over the edge, and my eyes raised to the ceiling. It was times like these that I'd remember what seemed to be alien memories. A cool and tinkling stream, sounds of something richer and more poignant than a flute, and (most strangely of all) a lion's wild roar. The promise I sought seemed to be avoiding me. The words seemed destined to be never spoken.

* * *

"Will you marry me?"

The day my family died, I thought of the words. They stirred no emotion; indeed, all feeling was dead inside me. I could never love again. No longer was I a strange hybrid in personality. When I heard the news, I cast off the figurative cloak I wore and assumed my duty as a woman.

As a queen... of Narnia.

* * *

As I pen this, dear, I think of the words you spoke but an hour ago:

"Will you marry me, Susan?"

Although they are the words I've wished to hear all my life, and the promise I've been yearning for, I can not give you the answer you desire. The Susan that was then is not the Susan that is now.

The girl you love is no more.

Sincerely,

Susan E. Pevensie.

* * *

Susan lifts her pen from the page and places it upon the table. To her, it is final. Being written, it can not be erased. She lifts the paper, folds it lengthways, and holds it in her hand for a barely perceptible moment, before stuffing it hastily into a plain white envelope.

"John Morgan," she scrawls with careful precision across the front, blatantly ignoring the sharp click of her fingernails upon the smooth surface of the pen. She hasn't clipped them since the accident, and has no time now. The nail on her index finger bends and snaps, but she does not pause in her writing. She has a purpose; a goal that must be achieved.

She no longer lives all alone in an apartment -- with a cat. She has moved back into her old home; which is, in her eyes, but a husk of its former self. No longer does Edmund slide with wild abandon down dusty bannisters; and no more does Lucy's cheerful voice ring out in greeting. Peter is no longer her steadfast companion, no more her confidant. No one is there to quarrel with her; no one is there to look at her with hurt in dark eyes. She misses the pout of Lucy's lips and the way her eyes shone after accomplishment. Peter's pen-marked desk looks empty without his long legs stretching around the side, and she cannot even glance at Edmund's dirt-thumbed books without a lump rising in her throat.

She feels hollow and empty, true, but to even contemplate love after the accident does not enter her mind. She must find what she has lost. She must keep her siblings and her parents alive in her heart.

Rising from her chair, Susan moves mechanically towards the coat rack and takes scarf and hat from their respective hooks. She pulls on thick boots and slips into her heavy coat. She glances in the cracked mirror as she searches for her gloves, and pauses in the task.

The cracked mirror. She remembers so clearly how it became cracked. Edmund, ever the boy, had been hiding under her bed, in a game of hide and seek with Lucy. In struggling out, he had toppled backwards, and his elbow had collided with the fragile glass.

"I was so angry, Edmund," Susan murmurs, slim fingers ghosting over the shattered pane; "but, if you were to do it again, I wouldn't even care. I wouldn't even care..."

She meets the eyes of her reflection, and pauses once more. Reddened eyes blink back. It is a curse, she reflects, that it is so hard to hide the evidence of her tears. Pushing her hands into her tiny gloves, Susan offers her reflection a half-hearted smile, and turns towards the door.

She stumbles down the narrow staircase and runs quickly to the door. She dares not look into the different rooms, for every displaced cushion and scuff mark is but a reminder for what is gone, and she does not feel physically well enough to see the evidence of lives cut short. Opening the front door with a shaking hand, she enters the street and closes the door gently (so gently) behind her.

The street is bustling and merry. A direct contradiction to her sorrow. Walking briskly along the left side of the footpath, Susan offers a dull smile to her neighbour's cheerful greeting.

"Hullo, Miss Pevensie," the neighbour's son, a tall, strong lad says gaily. He is a notorious flirt, and finds the mysterious young woman very intriguing. "Need some help there, Miss Pevensie? The rain's made the paths nigh impossible to walk on, see?"

"No," Susan answers curtly, "I am fine."

The neighbour's son shakes his head softly and jumps over the low hedge which separates his mother's land from the street. "It'd be on my conscience, see, to let a young lady walk alone when I'm ready and willing. Please, Miss, if you should turn your ankle, I'd never forgive myself."

Susan turns blank eyes in his direction, and shakes her head once more. "Excuse me," she says, with a small incline of her head, "but I must go."

"Now see here --" the neighbour's son begins (for never has he been snubbed), when he is stopped abruptly by his irate and elderly mother who smacks him sharply on the head with her gardening glove, and mutters crossly about a certain "arrogant young upstart, who is just like his father was (God bless his soul), and may he please shut up for once."

"Good-day," says Susan, a flicker of gratitude changing the normal sad expression of her face.

"Good-day, dearie," the neighbour says, grinning a toothless smile and leading her son into her house by his ear. Never again does the neighbour's son bother Susan, for her seeing him in such an undignified position has thoroughly crushed his pride.

Susan continues down the street, the bus stop in sight and her hand keeping a tight hold on the letter addressed to John Morgan. She fishes in her pocket for the correct change and sits upon the bus stop's bench.

It is lonely sitting there, with a drunk on a neighbouring bench keeping company with his bottle, and a fashionable young lady on the far end of the drunk's bench reading a newspaper and smoking a cigarette. Susan looks down at her feet and fingers the flap of the envelope.

"Hello," the fashionable young lady greets, stepping off the drunk's bench and seating herself on Susan's. "I'm Cynthia Greymarsh. Who are you?"

"Susan Pevensie," answers Susan, blinking slightly at the forward manner of the somewhat giddy girl.

"Dreadful weather, isn't it?" Cynthia continued.

"Yes."

"What's wrong, love?" asks Cynthia, smoothing her dress. "You look like today is the worst day of your life."

"Today," says Susan, wondering at herself for talking to this stranger, "I must tell the only man who ever really loved me, that I cannot love him in return."

"Oh?" Cynthia perks up considerably, and pauses in the action of a deep drag of her cigarette. "Why? Family troubles, jealous lover, money...?"

Cynthia obviously has no sense of subtlety or tact.

"My family," says Susan, lifting her head to look at the sky.

"Oh, tell them to mind their own business," says Cynthia, offering her favourite piece of advice. "Are they the strict, uptight sort?"

The bus pulls up at a pondering speed, and Susan rises from the bench. "No," she says, placing one foot on the bus's step and looking back at the well-rouged young lady, "they're dead."

* * *

It is exactly ten and a half minutes later, that Susan steps off the bus and walks towards the house of the man who's name is printed in careful letters across the front of a letter clutched in a sweaty hand.

The house is low and cosy, almost a cottage, and Susan's hand is shaking slightly as she reaches for the polished door-knocker.

Knock. Knock.

It sounds dreadfully loud, and Susan takes an involuntary step backwards.

"Down, Harry," sounds from within, "Down boy."

The door opens and Mr. John Morgan looks down at Susan with a kind, and slightly shy smile. The dog at his heels gives a smile, too; but whether it is kind or threatening is anyone's guess.

"Hullo, Susan," the master of the dog says, cheerfully glad to see the woman he hopes to make his wife.

"Hello, John," says Susan quietly, a familiar ache in her heart. "I - I want you to read this."

The letter is presented, and John Morgan takes it in his large hand. "A letter?" he asks, with a quirk of thick eyebrows. "Wouldn't a yes or no have been faster?"

"Just read it," says Susan, looking up at the tall young man. "And maybe you will understand."

"Won't you come in?"

"No; I must go."

"Oh. Alright. Good-bye, Susan."

"Good-bye, John."

The dog cocks his head at the finality of Susan's tone, but his master is ignorant to any and all implications. Susan opens her mouth as if to say something further, but snaps it shut and hurries towards the gate.

"Good-bye, John," she repeats, with her hand half-raised.

The master hears it not, for at that moment his dog howls with all the heartache of despair; and Susan's face turns ashen as her hand drops lifelessly at her side. She gives a last backward glance before her figure is lost around the corner, and John Morgan, rather perturbed, returns to his fire and his dog.

He opens the letter and smiles slightly at the neatness of the hand that wrote his name on the envelope.

"A pretty hand for a pretty girl," he remarks to Harry, who lies with graceful ease on the hearth and stares up at his master with doleful eyes. The dog seems alert, almost anxious; and, as he lies there, he lets his eyes flicker towards the great clock that frowns down from the corner wall.

Unfolding the paper, John Morgan's eyes travel across the sometimes blurred writing, and the skin between his brows creases harshly.

"I fear, Harry," he remarks, after a few minutes of agitated reading, "that Susan Pevensie has no desire to become my wife. Poor girl, so torn with grief that she's rambling about magical lands."

Getting to his feet, John Morgan runs both hands through his short hair and starts pacing.

"She doesn't understand how much I love her," he murmurs to the ceiling. "I didn't fall in love with the stupid, uncaring Susan. After the accident, she changed... Harry, she was different. Quieter, more observant. Gentle. Oh, Harry, she became so much gentler. It seemed to define her."

John comes to a stop in front of the mantelpiece and looks down at the fire.

"I remember the day we met," he says to the dog lying obediently at his heels. "I was just the ticket-checker, then, Harry. A few times a week I saw her when the train pulled into the station. She'd be standing there, looking like an angel in red plaid, and I'd smile at her. Sometimes, she'd smile back. The day I met her, she clambered on to the train and gave me a smile and her ticket. She told me her name. I don't think I've ever been so happy."

John bends his knees slightly so that his face is level with the fire, and pats the dog behind his ears.

"We always talked after that, and sometimes she'd turn up on my break. She wasn't happy even then, old boy. Always with a cigarette in one hand, and her powdercase in the other. She talked about what parties she attended, what dress she planned to wear, and what girl said what about the couples going around. Often, though, the talk would turn to her family. She loved them, Harry, although she'd never say it. Her eyes would shine when she talked about them, she was so proud."

The clock chimes the hour with mechanic precision: midnight. John stretches his legs and retrieves the letter from where he had left it on the low side-table. He reads the contents again, before he scrunches it in his left hand and throws it into the fire.

He sits by the fire until the flames die down and even the embers burn out.


	2. Veil or Shroud?

**AN: **I'm so sorry for the amount of time that has elapsed since I began this. It was a pain and a half to write, and I'm not entirely satisfied with some parts of this chapter, so any feedback is welcomed. Thank you so much to the people who reviewed the last chapter and, again, I'm sorry for the delay.

**Disclaimer: **Not mine.

* * *

Every day since the accident has been a struggle to rise for. This morning, the morning after she refused John, it seems to Susan as though her feet are as heavy as lead and her head aches more so then usual.

"Darn you, cat," she says automatically, before waking up to the realisation that her cat no longer lives with her. She blinks rapidly, groggily, and shuffles across the hall to the bathroom.

A pale, tired face looks back at her with sad and haunted eyes. She touches her reflection briefly, before dipping her head and washing her face with cold water.

"Life goes on," she mumbles, patting her face dry, "though sometimes you wish it wouldn't."

Lifting her head, Susan walks stiffly back into her small bedroom, the one she shared with Lucy, and sits down upon her little sister's bed. A dozen different emotions crush her heart as the familiar, fading smell of blossoms wafts up from the tousled blanket. Lucy, child at heart, never would make her bed in the morning; and Susan never dreams of making it... now.

The chief emotion, however, is regret.

Sitting upon Lucy's bed, with her legs tucked under her and her eyes shut, Susan remembers. She remembers and cries. The bed creaks softly in sympathy as Susan shifts her weight to a more comfortable angle, and the rising sound of the wind outside seems to howl in despair.

"I forgot," Susan sobs, lying down upon the bed with her face buried in the pillow. "I forgot. I didn't listen, Lu; and now you're dead. You're all dead. You've left me behind."

The house is a husk. The days are nightmares. The white curtains billowing at the window, the ones Lucy called: "Bride's veils", are shrouds. White, horrible shrouds. Susan rises from her little sister's bed and walks dazedly towards the window.

_"White, horrible shrouds," _she thinks, wrapping herself in their folds, _"and I am the corpse."_

She starts to hum, Lucy's favourite lullaby (Narnian, of course) and pulls a curtain from its' pole. Placing it around her head, veil and shroud intertwined, she walks falteringly towards her mirror and gazes morbidly at the effect.

"One or the other," she says softly, "should have been my destiny. One shall be my destiny," she adds quickly, wrapping the length of curtain around her body, "eventually."

As the wind continues howling outside the window, Susan contemplates the day with listless indifference. As a queen, shopping was of no importance; it was beneath her, naturally. As a broken, mourning young woman, however, it is vital to her very survival and Susan suddenly realises that the pantry is rather empty.

"Tomorrow," she whispers. "I'll shop tomorrow."

She turns towards the door, the curtain now breezily around her head, and walks slowly down the steps, the tune still playing happily in her head. She pauses only briefly in front of her brothers' room; she will visit there later.

The kitchen is dark and cold, but Susan feels no motivation to open the curtains. The stove is lit with chilled, trembling hands, and the kettle is placed with equal hesitation.

"Why should I be alive?" she says aloud, if only to cut the icy quiet. "What is there to live for? You said you were here, in this world," she adds brokenly, "but I can't find you. Not without them. Not anymore. I'm alone, Aslan."

The word sounds strange and foreign to her tongue, but it gives her a sense of warmth in her heart that has been gone for the past two months. "Aslan," she says again, with a timid reverence. She half expects to hear his comforting voice, but the kitchen is still as gloomy as before. Her spirits take a second plunge.

"I'm still alone," she murmurs.

The kettle whistles impatiently as the steam escapes through the spout, and Susan hurries to lift it from the stove. The hot metal burns her hand briefly, as she thoughtlessly grabs it with her naked hand, and she pulls back with a stifled exclamation of pain. She runs hurriedly to the sink, turns on the tap, and soothes the burn with the cool water.

Several minutes later, with her hand wrapped in a dishcloth and her cup of tea before her, Susan once more contemplates her day. She must dust the family pictures on the mantelpiece, of course, for that is a ritual she performs every Sunday; and she must spend an hour apiece in her siblings' and parents' room. She slowly sips the tea.

She has sunk once more into morbid reflections, and the curtain looks even more like a shroud as it sits quietly across her shoulders, as Susan puts the tea on the table and crosses her hands. It is too hot to drink.

The doorbell rings, startling her from her thoughts. She ignores it.

The doorbell rings again, more insistently this time, and Susan rises begrudgingly from the table to answer it.

"Who is it?" she asks sharply through the closed door, quite sure that it is the neighbour's son.

"John," is the brief answer.

Susan looks down; feminine instinct wanting to rush to the bedroom to primp, broken heart cautioning against doing so. She listens to her heart and pulls open the door.

"What do you want, John?" she asks softly, in sympathy with his haggard appearance. She quickly adds, "Did you read my letter?"

"Yes," John answers, just as quietly, "I did. But I didn't come here to discuss that. I want you to come to church with me."

"Why?" asks Susan, looking down and away.

"You're fading," says John firmly. "I want you to come with me because it'll make you feel better, Susan."

"I went to a church for the funeral," answers Susan, "and all I felt were grief and tears."

"Tears are for funerals, as is grief," answers John solemnly. "But there's joy there, too, Susan."

"No," says Susan curtly, "no, I can't. I can't face that grief again."

"But what are you facing here," says John pleadingly, "but grief? Please, Susan."

"I can't, John," says Susan softly, closing the door with a shaking hand. "I'm sorry."

She retreats hastily to the kitchen, acutely aware that the curtain still flows gaily from her shoulders. She throws her cup of tea down the drain and places the empty cup, unwashed, upon the dish rack.

With shaking hands and stinging eyes, Susan reaches for the dust rag and hurries into the living room. Her family's cheerful faces beam at her from the frames as she dusts them, and it is with a feeling of dread that she turns from her own photo, leaving it covered in a thick layer of dust.

Susan. Lovely, made-up creature, with disdainful expression and pale skin. Edmund stands beside her, a foot taller, his own expression a bitter smile. His eyes are sad, but his jaw is set in a show of restraint.

They had been arguing... over Narnia, of course.

"How could you, Susan?" His reproachful voice rings out in the darkened room just as clearly as it did that day. "How could you say such things? And to Lucy, of all people!"

"She must face the truth, Edmund. She's living in a fantasy world. It's time she snapped out of it... and you should, too."

Like a slap to the face, Edmund's next words sting and bite with as much force as they should have that day.

"You've betrayed Narnia, Susan," was the sad statement, "and you've betrayed us, too."

Snap. The photo was taken before they were aware, and Mr. Pevensie smiled happily over the lens. "I've been trying to get a photo of you two together for a while," was all he said, completely unaware.

The photo was framed and placed on the mantelpiece, under Edmund's direction. All he did was shrug when she complained. "Maybe you'll understand how much you've hurt us one day, Su," he whispered.

Yes, she understands, now; and the photo is a constant reminder.

Turning wearily from the room, Susan climbs the narrow stairs and enters her parents' bedroom quietly. The bed she makes with careful precision and care, smoothing the corners and patting the middle. Her mother loved to be tidy, you see, and so Susan cleans the room religiously, paying careful attention to the nooks and crannies. She finds her father's pipe hiding under the bed, and it is with a sort of reverence that she returns it to his drawer.

She sits upon the bed, careful not to wrinkle it too much, and sorts through old letters and books which once belonged to her parents. The letters, courtship letters, are rather bittersweet now, but she reads through them anyway, crying softly as she glimpses into the minds and souls of the two who are now gone. Her father's writing is so young, so joyfully hopeful, that Susan finds herself smiling gently through her tears. On the other hand, her mother's, equally hopefully, but more sensible, leaves her with a sense of having been comforted.

The curtain is considerably less shroud-like as she leaves the room with a lighter step.

Peter. Edmund. Their room seems to darken her spirits as she approaches. They were too young, far too young, to die. She opens the door with quiet ease and slips in.

A chair sits between their beds, and it is with a sombre step that she sits down. Their room is dark, but Susan will not open the curtains. This is how it was left; this is how it shall be, always. Peter's bed is neatly and precisely made, his dictionary and textbooks on the little side table. It almost seems to Susan that she can see him standing in the doorway.

But it is just a fantasy born of sober regret and tearful grief. It is but a ghost of wilful memories.

She turns her head slightly, so that he eyes are fixed upon Edmund's rumpled bed. Like Lucy, he preserved his child-like outlook, refusing to make the bed when she asked.

"What's the point, Su? I'm just going to mess it up again when I go to bed."

Now, in the dim-lit room, Susan concedes that he may have had a point.

Looking at the general disorder of Edmund's bed with eyes that are, for once, not clouded with tears, Susan notices the binding of a book peeking out from beneath the covers. She hesitates but a moment, before reaching out and taking the book with slim and gentle fingers.

She recognises it at once. It is a Bible; the same Bible Edmund and Lucy repeatedly tried to make her read.

"He's in here, Susan," she remembers Lucy saying eagerly.

"Who, dear?" Susan herself replied rather patronisingly.

"Aslan." The way Lucy breathed the name seemed to give it a joyful reverence.

Susan is ashamed to remember how she brushed Lucy off with the brief command to "grow up."

Opening the cover with clouded eyes, Susan flips to a random page, suddenly eager to discover Aslan within the lines. She scans the page rapidly, before the book drops from senseless fingers onto her lap.

A shadowed hill; a Witch's cruel smile; a gleaming knife; and a table of stone. The symbolic similarities are too obvious to ignore. She reads the Resurrection with a tightening in her chest and a lightening of her heart, remembering a vibrant roar from He who was killed in a traitor's stead.

Standing up suddenly, her hands clutching the Bible with feverish fingers, Susan hurries across the hall and changes her clothes and pulls on her shoes. She forgets to untie the curtain, which flows with breezy unconcern around her shoulders, instead brushing out her hair and smiling brightly at her reflection.

"He is in England, Lucy," she says softly. "You knew all the time, and I wouldn't listen. H - He didn't abandon me, after all."

She lays down her brush and walks quietly from the room, pausing only to shut the door gently behind her. She is giddy with excitement and faint from trepidation. She must hurry. She must go to the church. She must find John.

The curtain streams behind her as she walks swiftly down the street, her heavy shoes clattering on the path. The church is but a block's distance, but to Susan it feels as though she has been walking for ever. Stopping falteringly at the church's door, Susan enters with the swift beating of her heart loud in her ears.

John is standing at the back of the church, his hat in his hands and his head bent. He does not notice Susan's arrival, so intent is he on his prayers.

Susan walks quietly to where he stands, and, ignoring his startled jump, places a small hand in his large one. He meets her eye, a large smile spreading over his face, and whispers softly:

"Why did you come?"

Susan motions with a inclination of her head to the bible gently cradled in her arms, her eyes filling with tears. "I found Him, John," she murmurs in reply, "and - and you were right. There is joy to be found in a church."

As the sunlight sifts through the window over their head, and dances across Susan's dark hair, the curtain suddenly seem less like a shroud and more like a veil...

A wedding veil.


End file.
